Imaginary Forces

Imaginary Forces' Karin Fong Reprises Directorial Role for Animated Super Bowl Ad Campaign

New round of Chittenden Bank spots from Kelliher Samets Volk employs handmade elements to reflect D-I-Y business ethic

New York, NY (January 31, 2007) For the second year in a row, Super Bowl viewers in New England will be seeing an eye-catching, imaginative series of TV spots from ad agency Kelliher Samets Volk for Vermont's Chittenden Bank that was de-signed and directed by Imaginary Forces' Karin Fong.

As with last year's campaign, the spots focus on hip, iconoclastic Vermont businesses that have grown with the help and guidance of Chittenden-and, as with last year's campaign, the spots employ a mix of techniques designed to make them stand out not only from the category, but from most other ads on TV.

The campaign consists of four upbeat spots that focus on three separate businesses. In "Where does the best music come from?" viewers learn how Chittenden helps Advance Music, a mecca for everything from local garage bands to touring superstars. In "Homemade Chef. Homemade Oven," we focus on the bank's socially responsible relationship with American Flatbread, a pizza business renowned for its homemade dough. In "A Perfect Fit," we discover how two transplanted New Yorkers turned to Chittenden to nurture Zutano, their fast-growing children's wear boutique. And in "Perfectly Designed," Chittenden uses its deep relationship with the Zutano founders to highlight its sophisticated wealth management products and services.

"This campaign celebrates the best part of being a Vermont entrepreneur," says Kelliher Samets Volk creative director Bill Drew, who was also the campaign’s writer. "People seek out the homegrown, laid-back vibe here, and we felt that Chittenden needed to own that. All of the success stories featured in these ads have that home-grown feel to them, and they're all tied to the Chittenden brand."

Fong explains that what IF brought to the 2007 campaign was an extension of the approach the studio employed last year: "A lot of what we did the first time around was hand-made, and the agency loved the aesthetic of that work," she says, citing the mix of collage graphics and hand-drawn yet computer manipulated art that defined the look of last year's commercials.

"We wanted to push that feeling this year," she continues. "When I read the scripts, what came through was that these were stories about D-I-Y entrepreneurs. I thought it would be interesting if we built each spot out of the materials the business owners used in building their own companies."

As a result, the spot that highlights Advanced Music features photocopies of ticket stubs and posters of club dates for Vermont garage bands, along with actual 3-D objects that have been animated in stop-motion, sometimes in conjunction with cut-out or photocopied collage art. Likewise, the spot for American Flatbread relies on dough to form most of the animated characters that drive the action in the spot. Similarly, in "A Perfect Match," the entire backdrop for the spot and all the objects seen in it are made of buttons, fabrics, zippers, pins and other building blocks of the garment trade, reflecting the store's emphasis on contemporary clothes and accessories for kids.

The stop motion work was actually shot at IF’s offices in New York, where the conference room was converted into a makeshift studio where Fong and her team of animators, modelmakers and designers constructed detailed models and dioramas on which to play out the action of the scripts.

Much of the hand-made elements were shot in live action, with lots of the effects done in camera, Fong notes. In many instances, the images were then ported into graphics suites, where they were massaged and manipulated to produce the final results. "I love this combination of low-tech and high-tech," she adds. "It's great when you can't tell where one technique ends and another begins. We find that we get our best results when we mix these processes together. In this instance, we felt it just fit the narratives perfectly, while also matching the idiosyncratic, maverick feel of the companies that we were featuring."

Chittenden Credits:
Client: Chittenden Bank
Agency: Kelliher Samets Volk
Creative Director/Copywriter: Bill Drew
Art Director: Brad Harrison
Producer: Tamara Jones
Design and Production Company: Imaginary Forces
Director: Karin Fong
Art Director: Dana Yee
Designers/illustrators/modelmakers: Arisu Kashiwagi, Joey Salim, Jeremy Cox, Daryn Wakasa, Alex Reyes, Lucien Yang, Jennifer Shainin, Dana Yee, Karin Fong
Animators: Arisu Kashiwagi, Joey Salim, Daryn Wakasa, Alex Reyes, Lucien Yang, Dana Yee
Director of Photography: Joey Salim
Editor: Corey Weisz
Executive Producer: Maribeth Phillips
Producers: Carla Sacks, Brian Sullivan
Coordinator: Emily Branham
Music Company: Pulse Music, New York
Composers: Pismo, Rich DeCicco, Stephen Grywalski, Joel Kipnis